On A Steve Jobs Movie
Now that Sony Studios has optioned the movie rights to the upcoming Steve Jobs biography, speculation begins on who could play the iconic iLeader. Based on the public interest in Jobs’ life, the epic nature of his rags to riches and “second coming” story, plus the success of The Social Network — this project makes sense — I already want to see it.
Well, with some caveats. Fingers crossed that Jobs’ epic tale gets the serious treatment. I mean, Pirates of Silicon Valley was amusing, but contained some really corny moments like Steve tripping and way too much Steve Ballmer. Definitely in that made-for-TV category and nowhere near Oscar material.
So with a Steve Jobs biopic I hope for Sorkin, Scorsese or Paul Thomas Anderson as director, and Daniel Day Lewis as Jobs. Maybe Christian Bale or… Ryan Gosling (think about it). Someone with the range to depict an unemployable, rebellious man’s rise to king of the world — twice, deliver that commencement speech and then endure cancer and a dramatic weight loss. Oh, and Pixar could certainly add a few things.
Anyhow, I’ll definitely keep tabs on this flick as it develops, and duly complain when the title role goes to Freddy Prinze Jr., Jack Black as The Woz, and word leaks of an extended “developers, developers, developers” musical number featuring Kevin James as Ballmer.
My problem with the notion of this movie is time. Jobs’ story is simply too epic, and contains far too rich a timeline, to sum it all up in two, or even three, hours. If you just covered the comeback portion of the story alone, from 1997 to now, you’d still have a massively long story to tell. So either they have to pick just a short segment of his life, one key set of events to focus on, or they have to make a series of films, which isn’t likely.
Most famous people live longer, but their accomplishments mostly happen within a decade or so. Jobs was constantly accomplishing new things for 20+ years. And no one of those things is enough to sum up his overall contribution. You really won’t understand his full significance if you don’t cover a much longer span of time.
And that leads to needing a single actor that can play both young and old jobs. Very hard to picture anyone that can pull off both.
Can’t wait to read the book.
Good point — guess one strategy would be a three hour epic like The Godfather Part 2 that cuts between later Steve and early Steve life. And an actor playing young and old reminds me of Orson Welles in Citizen Kane. But both of these examples are awesome, once in a generation, lightning in a bottle movies — really unlikely we’ll get anything of that nature today.
I’m sure the book will be awesome but am already lowering my expectations for the movie. Unless part of Steve’s four year master plan was a virtual iSteve in a Pixar vault.
[…] My votes: Daniel Day Lewis, Christian Bale, or Ryan Gosling. […]